Omai, a Native of the Island of Utietea [i.e. Ulietea] (detail) Les Sauvages de la mer Pacifique 1805 Cook & Omai: The Cult of the South Seas Les Sauvages de la mer Pacifique 1805
Introduction The truest picture of an arcadia A Noble Savage in London The deaths of Cook and Omai Epilogue


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Chief Mourner Otahaite 1785

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Philippe Jacques de
Loutherbourg (1740–1812)
Chief Mourner Otahaite
1785
watercolour; 31.4 x 18.9 cm
Pictorial Collection R145

 

Intended as the greatest blockbuster pantomime of the eighteenth century, OMAI: Or, A Trip Round the World opened at Covent Garden Theatre in December 1785. OMAI displayed the combined production talents of set designer and special effects expert Philippe de Loutherbourg, playwright John O’Keeffe, musical composer William Shield and scene painter John Webber, plus at least four other ‘artistic gentlemen’.

De Loutherbourg was most responsible for imbuing OMAI’s farcical plot with a powerful overlay of geographic and ethnographic realism. A member of both the French and English art academies, the Alsatian-born painter had already produced lavish set designs for 30 London pantomimes. De Loutherbourg possessed a landscape painter’s talent for rendering vivid naturalistic scenes, combined with an engineer’s understanding of the mechanics of illusion—including depth of field, clockwork movement, realistic automata and dynamic light and sound effects.

The Times reported that de Loutherbourg had employed John Webber, artist on Cook’s third voyage, to advise on ‘native’ costumes and to paint occasional scenes. It also appears that he may have purchased some of Webber’s examples of ‘Otaheitea dresses’. The newspaper review praised the pantomime’s scenic authenticity, but the designs owe a great deal to perceptions of the exotic and the demands of the stage.

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